In providing telecommunication services to customers via a circuit, interexchange carriers (IECs), such as long distance service providers must hand off the circuit to local exchange carriers (LECs) each time the circuit passes through an adjunct access area. Adjacent access areas are known as Local Access Transport Areas (LATAs) and are geographical areas under the exclusive control of LECs (i.e., Bell Atlantic, Bell South, etc). The IEC, however, is allowed control of the circuits between adjunct access areas.
Similarly, a first IEC may lease facilities from a second IEC in order to provide service where the first IEC has no facilities For example, rather than building facilities and missing a customer due date for a provisional circuit, it may be more economical for the first IEC to lease facilities from the second IEC. However, the portion of the circuit making up the leased portion is under the exclusive control of the second IEC.
Any portion of the circuit under the control of the IEC is considered to be managed, since the circuit is managed by the IEC's Network Management System (NMS). For instance, the layout of the circuit with various component network elements may be displayed by entering the respective circuit identifier into the NMS. The circuit can be provisioned and inventoried via the respective circuit identifier.
Those portions of the circuit under the control of the LEC are considered non-managed meaning that portion of the circuit is managed by the LEC's network management system.
Unfortunately, since the IECs do not have access to the LEC's network management system, “work arounds” have to be implemented in order to depict the non-managed portions of the circuit For example, each managed portion of a circuit having a non-managed portion may be given a separate circuit identifier. This requires that each managed portion of a circuit reference all managed portions sequentially resulting in wasted man-hours and customer dissatisfaction due to IEC employees having to spend time locating appropriate sections of the circuit for a customer.
In the case of circuits designed or provisioned automatically, when a managed portion of a circuit is detected during such design the circuit will “fall out” of the design process in order for a human to continue the design process. This also results in wasted man-hours.
In another case, a cloud or black box is used to represent the non-managed portion of the circuit. In this case, there is no distinction made between a digital or optical carrier system, and the network elements within the non-managed portion are not inventoried in the network management system.
In another case, the network management system has no fault management (FM) capabilities within the non-managed portions of the circuit. Alarm information concerning the status of a managed portion of the circuit can not be transmitted through the non-managed portion of the circuit. Thus, each managed portion of a circuit is monitored for alarms separately.
The previously mentioned “work arounds” do not adequately meet the needs of the communications community in resolving how to depict managed and non-managed portions together on a circuit.